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New Trove Opened in Kennedy Killing

Craig Watkins, the district attorney in Dallas, at a news conference announcing the release of a collection of documents and items related to the Kennedy assassination.Credit
Mike Stone/Reuters

DALLAS — The Kennedy assassination — a defining moment in American history and a never-ending topic of debate among conspiracy theorists — re-entered the spotlight for a moment Monday, after the Dallas district attorney unveiled the contents of a safe that had been secret for more than 40 years.

Inside were clothing worn by Lee Harvey Oswald; a small, tooled leather holster belonging to his killer, Jack Ruby; and piles of typed, old crackling documents. But nothing that was likely to settle the longstanding dispute over President John F. Kennedy’s death.

Perhaps the most intriguing item was what purports to be a transcript of a conversation Ruby had with Oswald at Ruby’s Dallas nightclub, the Carousel, in which they plot to kill Kennedy to satisfy organized crime bosses.

But the not-terribly-lifelike dialogue reads like a movie script — and may well have been. For example, Ruby responds to Oswald’s suggestion that they kill the president by saying, “But that wouldn’t be patriotic.”

The trove of material connected to the assassination was collected by the former district attorney, Henry M. Wade, who prosecuted Ruby and continued in office until 1987. Mr. Wade died in 2001.

One of the surprises in the collection was a contract for a movie deal about the killing, signed by Mr. Wade, said Craig Watkins, who became district attorney last year. Mr. Watkins said he did not know if the transcript was meant to be part of the film or why the film was never made.

An expert who has written a book on the assassination, Max Holland, said the transcript appeared to be based on a long-discredited claim by a Dallas lawyer named Carroll Jarnagin, who said he and a stripper had seen Oswald and Ruby together and overheard the discussion. “It’s a concoction,” Mr. Holland said, adding that Oswald and Ruby did not know each other.

The report of the meeting was debunked by the Warren Commission, he said, which after extensive investigation concluded that Oswald was a lone gunman, not a participant in a conspiracy.

The documents have not been examined by outside experts, and even his staff has yet to read most of the material, Mr. Watkins said. Once the material is cataloged and images scanned into computers, it will be donated to a museum and made available to the public, he said. The possibilities include the Smithsonian, in Washington, and the Sixth Floor Museum, in Dallas, in the former Texas School Book Depository, from which Oswald fired on Kennedy’s motorcade.

Although his predecessors had chosen to keep the material in a safe on the 10th floor of the Dallas County Courthouse for decades, Mr. Watkins said he saw no reason to do so. “We decided that this information is too important to keep secret,” he said.

Photo

Items in Jack Ruby's possession when he was arrested. Credit
Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press

Mr. Watkins, the first black district attorney in Texas, said he was releasing the material in part because of the window it provided on the racism of the past. The material “takes us back to 1960 and the climate not only of our criminal justice system, but of our country as it relates to race,” he said. He cited the official letterhead of nearby Hunt County, which claimed “the blackest land and the whitest people.”

In addition to the transcript, he displayed two sets of brass knuckles that belonged to Ruby, and a letter from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the Dallas police chief, contending that Ruby’s sister said her family had somehow obtained a police report on the preparations for Kennedy’s visit to Dallas.

Oswald was arrested for fatally shooting the president on Nov. 22, 1963. Two days later, Ruby shot Oswald to death. He was convicted of murder, but won an appeal. He died of cancer in 1967, before the case was retried.

The decision to release the material was praised by Gerald Posner, a lawyer and expert on the Kennedy assassination, who said that even if the transcript turned out to be a fake — “more entertaining than illuminating,” as he put it — historians would probably benefit from seeing contemporary documents related to the investigation.

No matter what they contain, Mr. Posner said, the documents were almost certain to feed conspiracy theories. “And if it turns out they are innocuous,” he added, “people will say they must have destroyed the most incriminating documents.”

Less than a mile away, vacationing families were celebrating Presidents’ Day by peering at the grassy knoll, now mostly bare dirt, from which conspiracy enthusiasts say a second gunman fired at Kennedy. Visitors there said they were aware of the new trove, but did not expect it to end the controversy.

“There’s always going to be a theory,” said Donald E. Knox of Baltimore, here to attend a cheerleading competition with his daughter Samantha, 16, and wife, Sandra.

About 1,500 people a day visit the Sixth Floor Museum, which was celebrating its 19th anniversary Monday with a chocolate-and-vanilla cake in the lobby.

“A lot of people come here believing they can solve the complex details of this story,” said Nicola J. Longford, the museum’s executive director, adding that she would be delighted if the district attorney turned the trove over to her curators.

The conspiracy debate continued to rage just outside the museum, where Roseanne Sande, 77, of Spokane, Wash., and her friend Mary Ann Thompson, 72, of Prescott, Ariz., stood on the corner preparing to enter.

“Crazy things happen, and Oswald was crazy,” said Ms. Thompson, who said she believed that Oswald had acted alone.

Her friend disagreed. “I think it was a conspiracy, I really do,” Ms. Sande said. “I’ve never had a good feeling about this, and I just can’t get it out of my mind.”

John Sullivan contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: New Trove in Kennedy Killing; New Theories Sure to Follow. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe